A year ago, the 39th New York Mini 10K seemed like a celebration of new life — two exciting new Kenyan prodigies, Linet Masai and Emily Chebet, headed the field in their first appearances on the roads in America, and two famous expectant mothers, Paula Radcliffe and Kara Goucher, were in attendance to embody the hopeful future.

The 40th running on June 11 took on darker tones. It became the occasion for New York’s first commemoration of one of the greatest runners ever to perform in the city, Grete Waitz, who died of cancer at age 57 on April 19. Waitz’s impact on the New York Mini was as transformative as her nine wins in the New York City Marathon. The Norweigian legend won it five times, twice setting the world 10K record on its uncompromisingly hilly Central Park course. She singlehandedly took the course record from 33:30 down to 31:00.

Waitz’s fastest win, 31:00 in 1980, would have won this year’s race by 29 seconds. Her other winning times, 31:16 (1979), 31:53 (1984), 32:00 (1982) and 32:44 (1981) would have put her first, second, second and seventh in the 2011 results. Even with today’s stellar invited fields, only four runners have gone faster here than Waitz did — Asmae Leghzaoui (subsequently banned for drug use), Paula Radcliffe, Lornah Kiplagat, and last year Linet Masai.

That is not a dry list of stats. It is the most dramatic way I know of showing why Grete Waitz was important, how far ahead of her time she was, and why she is mourned. Racing and winning — those are the terms in which she would be most pleased to be remembered. (See also my Footsteps column — “The Historical Significance of Grete Waitz” — in the July/August 2011 issue of Running Times.)

The tributes to Waitz reminded us that every life is a run with a finish line. Instead of 3-year-old Isla Radcliffe frolicking with her pregnant mom through the 2010 finish, the special cheers in 2011 were for Grete’s grieving but gracious husband Jack Waitz, and brother Jan Andersen, honored by being the first men to run and finish the world’s oldest women-only road race.

Perhaps I was melancholy, but there seemed other glimpses of loss or decline. For the first time in her eight appearances in the Mini, four-time winner Lornah Kiplagat (37) was not able to take it out fast. She had made the journey from Kenya mainly as a tribute to Waitz, but her positive tactics were missed. The slightly uphill first mile has always belonged to her. One year, a novice journalist on the truck asked innocently “Why don’t they stay with her?” Even last year, when she knew she couldn’t win, Kiplagat spear-headed that first mile as usual, in 4:56. This time, while (or because) she remained inconspicuous, a pack of 30 was spread across much of the width of Central Park West, padding through in 5:31.

That should have made for a classic accelerating race, a big pack staying strong when the surges came. But when Masai moved to the front just before the 2-mile mark (10:40), not with any punishing attack, just picking the pace up to where it should be (downhill third mile 4:51), no one could foot it with her. Not Chebet, who clung to her last year; not Edna Kiplagat, the Kenyan New York marathon champion, not Irvette Van Blerk (RSA), despite looking powerful while leading the second mile; not Kim Smith (NZL), who was knocking herself back into a racing mindset after her Boston Marathon trauma; not Eloise Wellings (AUS), with a recent track 31:41 tucked in her pocket; and certainly not World Marathon Majors leader Liliya Shobukhova (RUS), who was totally invisible.

It wasn’t significantly hot, and there was no wind, but conditions were humid (96 percent), almost steamy. That seems the explanation. In prospect it had looked a scrumptiously talented field, but their times all ended at least a minute off expectation. Every time I checked Masai’s lead, she had simply added two seconds. The 40th race for the New York Mini somehow never happened.

Consolation came in the opportunity to study Masai’s extraordinarily beautiful running. (There wasn’t much else to see.) “Poetry in motion,” someone said, and certainly there is a rhythmic fluidity and almost musical grace. Upright, serene, elegant and imperturbable, she flicks along rather than springs, seeming to touch the road only fleetingly with the forefoot, on legs so fine that they are barely tapered, and motion that seems to include a lot of vertical yet never causes her head to bob or upper body to waver. A slight frown on the uphill just after 8K (25:25) was the only external sign of effort. It’s hard to find adequate words. It wasn’t till I got home in the country the next day, and watched a doe prance on long slender legs across the lawn in pursuit of her wandering fawn, that I knew what Linet Masai had been reminding me of for thirty-one and a half minutes in Central Park.
So it wasn’t a great race, but it wasn’t all gloom. Modern running never is, least of all a women’s race staged with the promotional brilliance of the New York Road Runners (whose marathon just won the “Sports Business Journal” Event of the Year award). All the “This one’s for Grete” shirts and Norwegian flags created a respectful festiveness. Add that the event was celebrating its 40th running, with four past winners in the field — Kiplagat, 16th in 33:55; Kastor, 25th in 35:00; Kim Griffin, 41:24 at age 49; and Anne Audain, 45:46 at age 55; plus race founder Kathrine Switzer, 57:45 at age 64, wearing the original “Crazylegs” race shirt, which even more remarkably still fit.

“Crazylegs? What a great name! We should call the race Crazylegs again!” enthused Road Runners CEO Mary Wittenberg. In 1972 Crazylegs was a new women's leg-shave cream — though in actuality it was merely a men's shave cream dyed pink with added perfume. Their innovative PR company had the idea of capitalizing on the publicity of women becoming official that year in the Boston Marathon. They approached New York's Mr. Make-it-Happen Fred Lebow, who teamed with Switzer and Nina Kuscsik to create the race. Those were creative days. Handing race flyers at random to upwardly mobile women in the Manhattan streets, thrusting them on downwardly mobile ones in smoky bars, and boosted by a media splash when Lebow persuaded three Playboy bunnies to fake a crouch start for a photo-op, the trio somehow conjured 78 women, a big field even for men in 1972. They proved beyond doubt that if you built it, the women would come. They still do — a sell-out field, 4,700 finishers, in 2011.

Crazylegs had proposed a marathon, not knowing what that meant, but Lebow and Switzer talked them down to 6 miles, and sold the name “Mini-Marathon,” derived from the high fashion garment of the day, the miniskirt. There’s nothing miniature about the numbers, the prize purse or the race’s impact on the development of running over the last 40 years.

My view of this year’s event as being more about endings than beginnings is unfair to one new acquaintance, 3-month-old Piper Bloom Kastor, in whose (mostly) amiable company I spent the post-race lunch. Her mother Deena Kastor is one of at least five of the elite field who are recent parents. The average age of the first 25 finishers was 28.5. Elite women’s running is a mature sport and hard to break into.

One rising talent managed to do it. Belanesh Gebre, 22, a surprise third in 32:10, after challenging Aheza Kiros (32:09) all the way, is the first of several New York based Ethiopians to emerge as a serious force. Groups of aspirant overseas athletes based in the U.S., receiving expert coaching but not in college – that’s a new factor in the sport.

You never know where new beginnings are going to come from, as Grete Waitz proved on the now legendary day in 1978 when she quietly lined up among the crowds on the Verrazano Bridge for her first marathon.

Roger Robinson has done many things in a lifetime in running, including racing for England and New Zealand, setting masters records at Boston and New York, being stadium announcer at two Commonwealth Games and serving on a national governing body (“but that was like Alcatraz,” he says). Most of his jobs involve finding words to describe or analyze running; he’s a TV and radio commentator, author of three successful books and senior writer for Running Times, for which he has won two U.S. journalism awards. “Roger on Running” will appear monthly on runningtimes.com.